The Tea Party Folk According to Fox Voters: "A fruitless mix of racism and conspiracy theories".

The most astonishing thing about this poll is that it comes from Fox News' own website.

81% of people who took part in their poll thought the tea party movement was a fruitless mix of racism and conspiracy theories.

186,097 voted for this option, which is not an insubstantial number.

And this poll comes at a time when some in the Tea party movement have expressed their hope that they can take over the Republican party.

Phillips: And part of it's gonna end up -- where this Tea Party movement goes, is partially gonna be dependent on the Republican Party. If they're going to keep pushing people like Dede Scozzafaza or Mark Kirk on us, the Tea Party movement is not gonna vote for somebody just because they have an R behind their name. We don't like people like John McCain. We want good conservatives in office.

And if the Republican Party is not going to help us do that, then in 2011 there's probably going to be a pretty big push to set up the Tea Party as a separate political party. I don't think that's the best idea in the world, I'd really prefer to see us take over the Republican Party. But there's a lot of pressure from our people right now because we want conservatives in office.

They are demanding, exactly as I predicted after the election, that the reason they lost is because the party is not right wing enough.

And it's interesting that Palin has become their most visible face whilst someone like Phillips admits, "We don't like people like John McCain."

Tags: Tea Party convention, Palin, nutters